Matthew Mark - Dark Days Rough Roads

One time, a resident had called and complained about a medflight coming in at 0700 hrs one Sunday morning. Haliday said, “Hey genius, in case you didn’t know, emergency medical flights generally aren’t scheduled.” The man just called him a smart-ass and hung up on him. A few weeks later, karma played a role when the man was hosting a picnic when another helicopter landed. Haliday still laughs about the flying plates, cups and napkins, whenever he thinks about it.

He called in to dispatch and told them to mark the time and that the bird was almost on the ground. They always marked arrival and departure times in case the FAA audited their records, even though he figured they never would. There wasn’t a response from dispatch, which wasn’t unusual due to the fact that dispatch was usually tied up with more important things. These were mostly caused because the campus was in the middle of a small city outside of Detroit, but just as notorious as Detroit for being a crack hood.

Haliday had unscrewed the top on his bottle of pop and started to take a sip when he noticed the problem. As he tilted his head back to drink, he looked straight at the Eurocopter wobbling violently as it spun toward the ground. Haliday ducked down using the engine compartment of the truck as a shield just as the helo struck the ground and exploded, sending pieces in every direction. A small piece of the tail rotor shot through the windshield of the vehicle, causing chunks of glass to fill the interior of the Tahoe.

Haliday slowly lifted his head and saw a wall of flames and a pile of machinery. There would be nobody coming out of that wreckage alive. He grabbed the radio mic again and called for dispatch to call the fire department. Again there was no response, so he took it upon himself to use his cell phone. A quick push of the power button revealed there was nothing but a dark screen.

He ran over to the beast and charged the system while holding the hose. He dumped every ounce of extinguisher agent on the flames, but it was useless. Looking toward the people who stopped to watch the landing, he could see them trying the same exact thing with their cell phones. This is when he realized what had happened. Life had changed drastically in a matter of seconds.

As he walked past the folks, they asked him why he wasn’t helping and his response was very unsettling. He simply told them there was nothing he could do. Not for the people in the helicopter and not for them. They had no understanding of what he really meant and just looked at him with puzzlement.

Haliday continued to walk back toward the hospital in a very quiet neighborhood with no noise, but the slight dull roar of flames from the burning wreckage made the only sounds anyone could hear. There was no music, no cars, no hum from the electric lines, no noise from anything at all.

Haliday walked past the ER and saw staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was almost as if they would be able to do something about what was going on. It would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the fact that they really had no clue what would be transpiring in just a matter of a few short hours.

As he approached the dispatch office, he ignored those who were asking him questions. The dispatch officer was standing at the open door as a handful of people were asking her questions. Questions she could not answer. “What happened, was it a power outage, would the generators come on, why didn’t they, how come the phones didn’t work?” and many more. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know, I don’t have any answers myself.”

Haliday looked her in the eyes and said, “You need to leave.” She looked concerned, but not frightened. It was at this time, by telling her to leave, that he confirmed what she thought had happened. Thanks to Haliday, she was ready for the event. She grabbed her personal items and left the dispatch area. Haliday grabbed his personal items and left as well, passing by the people who could not believe the campus public safety officers were leaving them at a time like this.

Haliday walked into a bathroom. The bathroom was dark so he hit the surefire flashlight on his belt to light it up a bit and was slightly startled when he heard a voice, “Hey man, what’s going on in here? I came in to drop a deuce and the power went out. Everything ok out there?”

Haliday told him, “Don’t worry, everything will come out ok.”

The guy missed the joke. Haliday went back to doing his own thing. He commenced to quickly change from his uniform into regular old gray man camo. He put on jeans, a shirt and a ball cap. It would be stupid to look like any type of police officer, soldier or government agency robot. That would get you in deep trouble soon enough, so he decided long ago to just blend in. He knew elsewhere that the dispatcher either did the same thing or was doing the same thing.

Quickly stripping the gear off his duty belt and taking what he needed, Haliday then left the bathroom. He had his pack, which was dark maroon in color to blend in, and started toward an exit door located near the administrative hallway.

A voice called out and he walked down the darkened hall to talk to the public safety supervisor who had been helping set up the hospital’s incident command center in a small conference room. This was limited to a dry erase board and easel with paper.

The supervisor asked him where he was going. Haliday looked around in the room to see the admin staff with various managers and staff from other departments milling around. Haliday looked at the supervisor and said, “You have no idea what just happened and what’s going to happen around here.”

With a puzzled look the supervisor said, “What do you mean, it’s a power outage; we get them now and again.”

Haliday chuckled and said, “Not like this.” One of the managers heard the chuckle and took it upon herself to ask what was so funny.

She said, “This is no laughing matter; there will be a lot of inconvenienced people who will be upset.”

None of these people still had a clue. Haliday coughed loudly, in a very exaggerated manner, and asked for everyone’s attention. Most everyone stopped and looked at him.

“What you people fail to understand here is the fact that this is no regular power outage. This was an EMP, electromagnetic pulse from who knows where,” Haliday said.

Immediately, the maintenance director interrupted and said it was irresponsible to even mention an EMP, that it was simply a power outage. Haliday looked him in the eye and told him he could only hope. He briefly explained what an EMP was, and then commenced to explain how he knew this was what it was. The explanations were simple enough, but you would have thought he was trying to explain rocket science.

First off he explained the lack of power and the fact that none of the emergency lights came on. Next were the generators, which were sitting quietly. After that he explained the lack of land lines and the lack of cell phones, not having power let alone a signal. Even the basic of all types of items was dead. As soon as he explained the helicopter crash, which they hadn’t even heard about yet, their jaws dropped.

More people started coming in and also gathering in the hallway to either listen to or add to the confusion. They started complaining about the fact that this didn’t work, that didn’t work, the staff needs this, and the staff needs that, the maintenance crew isn’t fixing anything, etc. They had no idea how far up the creek they were without the proverbial paddle.

The CEO asked the maintenance director when they could get power back and everyone awaited the answer. He stood silent, then repeated the question, which had an answer nobody wanted to hear. The maintenance director simply said that he honestly believed it was now indeed an EMP and there would be no power any time in the near future. He said there was simply nothing that could be done and then he turned and walked away. People were still dumbfounded and did not know what to do, so they just sat there. One lady spoke up and said that things could not be that bad.